The povery construct and it's resonance with the experiencing of deprivation. Social relations in a Jamaican community.

Abstract

This research provides one account of the complex relationship between differentiated experiences of deprivation and the dominant poverty construct in the Jamaican context. It is based on research conducted over a period of nine months in a Jamaican ¿squatter¿ community, Windsor, in the Parish of St. Ann. The study is organised into two ¿positional¿ chapters (conceptual framework and methodology) and four direct ¿response¿ chapters that demonstrate the ways in which the official poverty approach (from concept to policy) resonates with the living experiences of individuals. The ¿response¿ chapters step back from debates on the measurement of poverty so as to critically and reflexively consider the construct¿s conceptual and definitional antinomies. This is done through: (i) an excavation of a partial social history of poverty discourses in Jamaica; (ii) an evaluation of problems with knowledge production in the participatory method; (iii) an examination of the implications of the abstraction of the poor from spatial relations; and (iv) an exploration of different ways in which individuals ¿picture¿ living in their surroundings. The conclusion drawn is that it is necessary to begin engaging in a multidisciplinary project which accounts for difference within the poverty construct. This is because, insofar as it is possible, the removal of the most extreme forms of deprivation is not in itself sufficient for the eradication of the social relations that give rise to these privative ¿conditions¿. There instead needs to be critical engagement with relations of deprivation as resident in the social body as a whole in conceptualising poverty.